TOKAANU FIRE TRAGEDY

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20025, 25 August 1939, Page 7

TOKAANU FIRE TRAGEDY

EVIDENCE OF MOTHER DEFECTIVE FIREPLACE (Per Press Association.) TAUMARUNUI, this day. An inquest, was opened yesterday concerning the victims of the Tokaartu fire tragedy before the coroner, Mr. W. Thomas. The mother gave evidence, jher husband being deaf and dumb. She said: that the family occupied two huts on the settlement scheme property and that it had been the practice for the six elder children to sleep on the floor of the whare and for her husband and herself, with the infant children to retire to the other Wh'are a short distance away. ■The building where the children slept had one room and a fireplace with a sack in front to . stop . ..the Srt She put the children to bed, and she and her husband and an infant retired to the other whare. Later they heard shouts and found the children’s whare in flames. Severely Burnt

They got the children out but all were severely burnt. The district nurse treated the children for the burns and called the Taumarunui ambulance. They set out for- Taumarunui, 70 miles distant, in two cars with the children, and met the ambulance on the way. She had since heard that a neighbour had seen the eldest boy taking more firewood into the whare after the parents had left. She thought that the boy must have built up the fire and that some of it fell out while they were asleep, igniting, the buildin|he had always regarded the fireplace as unsafe, and had taken the greatest care. There were only about two feet from the fireplace to the woodwork near the hearth and nothing to protect it from falling embers. The inquest was adjourned sine die.